Foreign Policy examines the difficulties of exercising hegemonic power in modern society when faced with an insistent opponent of disproportionate strength.
So what does Jay-Z do? If he hits back hard in public, the Game will gain in publicity even if he loses... the classic problem of a great power confronted by a smaller annoying challenger. And given his demonstrated skills and talent, and his track record against G-Unit, the Game may well score some points. At the least, it would bring Jay-Z down to his level — bogging him down in an asymmetric war negating the hegemon's primary advantages. If Jay-Z tries to use his structural power to kill Game's career (block him from releasing albums or booking tour dates or appearing at the Grammy Awards), it could be seen as a wimpy and pathetic operation — especially since it would be exposed on Twitter and the hip hop blogs.Also discussed: Hard power vs. soft power, the dangers of over-extension, and the Nas Doctrine. Unexplained: How does Soulja Boy fit in to all of this?
Damn it feels good to be a diplomat.
OK... who have you pissed off now???
I wrote a long, drawn-out thing about this, but: Game is Iran (or North Korea) and Soulja Boy is, eh, Canada: Harmless enough until you realize he's more popular (or bigger in foreign oil production) than you think.
Soulja Boy is situated outside of the traditional rap echelon anyway - he rose to power [??!] via the then-unconventional route of a really astute online strategy (he self-released Crank That via the internet and his first album was called Souljaboytellem.com - come on!), which of course is why Kanye now has a blog and every other rapper a Twitter account. Stylistically, his signature combination of relatively brain-dead hooks and almost stupidly simple beats relegate him to oddity status, to the point where people often don't comprehend how popular and successful he actually is because they don't take his music seriously even though it tends to be the most catchy thing on the radio. Is there a country for that?
Again: Cah-nah-da.
Next week in the Economist: How the rise and fall of Master P correlates to that of the Japanese Yen.
Make em say UNGGGGGGH (UNGGGGGGH) Na-nah na-nah
Does the Game have any legit beef with Jay-Z, or is he just doing the hip hop WWF thing? Because the latter is getting really annoying.
Never debate down. I possible could have read that here.
Is this why the failure to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden destroyed the Bush Presidency?
Bush was all "we'll smoke 'em out" and "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and then when OBL limped across the mountain passes to Pakistan from Tora Bora, Bush looked all weak and ineffectual? And then Bush tried to be all "Osama isn't the point" and threw his "war on terror" lines around too much so that he had to pick a beef with a tired out old rapper (Saddam) to change the subject. But then he took that old dude and built him up into a "imminent threat" and full-on invaded his country, only to be humiliated again cuz there weren't no WMDs and OBL had nothing to do with Saddam?
Then it was all downhill for Bush, with Katrina (even wimpy-ass Kanye West got a shot in on him), the Democrats taking over Congress and his girl Harriet getting dissed by his own crew?
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? I SEE A SERIES OF WORDS AND THINGS LIKE SENTENCES BUT THEY SEEM TO HAVE BEEN PULLED RANDOMLY OUT OF A HAT BY DAVID BOWIE'S DOG "MANDY".
WHAT IS GOING ON?